


Lone Wolf

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Nightshade Series - Andrea Cremer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8696155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: In the novels, Shay remains in wolf form once the rift is sealed. What would have happened if he retained his human form instead?





	

It was easier for Sabine, Shay thought as the two of them stood and watched their former packmates, Ethan tactfully giving them some privacy. Sabine had made her choice to sacrifice her wolf essence for Ansel, to allow him to be with his family again, and with Bryn. She had Ethan now, she had the opportunity to build a new life for herself with the Searchers, to close the door on the days that had only caused her pain. Aside from Nev, a lot of them had only been in her pack for a short while anyway. Dax, Fey, Cosette, Sabine’s original pack, they were all gone now, collateral damage in the battle against the Keepers. And Ren…no, Shay wouldn’t think about him, not about how they had talked about the possibility of how, if Shay hadn’t made it, Ren would still be there for Calla. In the end, neither of them had got what they wanted.

But Shay had had to do it, known it was what he had to do even as the Searchers admitted that none of them knew what was going to happen to him. The Rift had to be sealed, the Keepers, or what remained of them, had to be stopped, and he was the only one who could do it. If he didn’t, then at some later point in time, people could be facing just such another battle.

He’d known even as he did it that it was never going to end happily for him, that whichever way it went, he was going to lose something. He’d known there was a possibility that since he was bitten, not born, he would remain in his human form, with the chance to build the relationship with his parents that he had dreamed of so many times over the years, and yet he would lose his relationship with Calla, his friendships with Ansel, Nev and Mason. And yet if he were to take wolf form, to move to Haldis along with Calla and the others, Shay had known that it was going to mean losing the chance to reunite with his parents, to have the time with them that he had thought he was permanently deprived of. For a few short minutes, Shay had believed he could have it all; Calla, his parents, his friends. And then he had found that it was not to be.

He knew that he was not the only one to lose anything in the war. Look at Adne. She had lost her father, and then found her brother only to lose him again so soon after. Adne had never had the chance to build a proper sibling relationship with Ren, Monroe and Ren had also never been able to get to know each other. Shay knew that Adne sometimes found it hard to be around him, knowing that he had what she was never going to get the chance to achieve, and also knowing that there was a part of him that would have sacrificed that chance to get to know his parents if he could have taken the chance to be with Calla. He couldn’t lie to Adne and tell her that wasn’t the case, 

“Do you think they remember any of it?” Sabine asked as they made their way back towards Ethan, to the portal, and as Shay looked at her, he realised that it wasn’t as much easier for her as he had initially thought, that there was a part of her that would still have loved to go running over to them, to mingle with them once more. “Calla and the others. When she looked over here. Do you think they know it’s us, who we are, all we went through together?”

“I don’t know, Sabine,” was all Shay said. He didn’t get into the whole truth about how he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know, whether Calla still felt the loss of both him and Ren, or her mother. Maybe it would be easier for Calla if she didn’t remember any of what had happened, if she could continue living her life as a wolf without having to think of those she would never see again. But a part of Shay also liked the thought that it hadn’t been in vain, that she did remember everything, that sometimes she did still think of him.


End file.
